imported>Entranced98: Importing Wikidata short description: "British chess player"

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Importing Wikidata short description: "British chess player"

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{{Short description|British chess player}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
{{Use British English|date=May 2012}}
{{Infobox chess player
|name=G. H. Diggle
|image=
|caption=
|birthname=Geoffrey Harber Diggle
|country={{ENG}}
|birth_date={{Birth date|1902|12|6|df=y}}
|birth_place=[[Moulton, Lincolnshire|Moulton]], [[Lincolnshire]], England
|death_date={{Death date and age|1993|2|13|1902|12|6|df=y}}
|death_place=[[Brighton]], England
|title=
|worldchampion=
|womensworldchampion=
|rating=
|peakrating=}}
'''Geoffrey Harber Diggle''' (6 December 1902 – 13 February 1993)<ref name="WinterTribute">[[Edward Winter (chess historian)|Edward Winter]], [http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter21.html#4337._A_chess_Watergate Chess Note 4337], quoting Winter, [[CHESS magazine]], June 1993, p. 46.</ref> was a [[Great Britain|British]] [[chess]] player and writer. Diggle contributed articles to the ''[[British Chess Magazine]]'' (''BCM'') from 1933 to 1981, and to the [[British Chess Federation|British Chess Federation's]] publications ''Newsflash'' and ''Chess Moves'' from 1974 to 1992.<ref name="WinterTribute"/> [[C.H.O'D. Alexander]] called Diggle "one of the best writers on chess that I know".<ref>C.H.O'D. Alexander, ''A Book of Chess'', Harper & Row, 1973, p. 138. {{ISBN|0-06-010048-6}}.</ref> In his ''A Book of Chess'', Alexander reproduced ''in toto'' Diggle's account, first published in the November and December 1943 ''BCM'', of the match between [[Howard Staunton|Staunton]] and [[Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant|St. Amant]].<ref>Alexander, pp. 138–42.</ref>

After Diggle told Alexander of a game he had lost in seven moves (1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bc4 Nxe4 4.Bxf7+?! Kxf7 5.Nxe4 Nc6 6.Qf3+ Kg8[[Chess punctuation#.3F.3F: Blunder|??]] 7.Ng5[[Chess punctuation#.21: Good move|!]] [[Glossary of chess#Resign|1-0]] Davids-Diggle, London Banks League 1949), Alexander affectionately christened Diggle "the Badmaster", a facetious counterpoint to the more familiar title [[Grandmaster (chess)|Grandmaster]]. Diggle later adopted the sobriquet as a [[pseudonym]], writing a series of articles in ''Newsflash'' under that name between 1974 and 1986.<ref name="WinterTribute"/><ref>G. H. Diggle, ''Chess Characters: Reminiscences of a Badmaster'', Chess Notes, Geneva, 1984, pp. i, 50.</ref>

Chess [[historian]] [[Edward Winter (chess historian)|Edward Winter]] wrote the following in his remembrance of Diggle in [[CHESS magazine]]:<ref name="WinterTribute"/>
<blockquote>Specializing in nineteenth-century chess history (particularly the Staunton period), he brought the old masters to life with rare wit and shrewdness. These qualities also permeated his accounts of the idiosyncratic doings and sayings of club "characters", such as the elderly player "who fumbled his way to perdition at reasonable speed until he was a [[queen (chess)|queen]] and two [[minor piece]]s to the bad, after which he discovered that 'every move demanded the nicest calculation'", or "the [[Lincoln, Lincolnshire|Lincoln]] bottom board of 1922, who complained that he had 'lost his queen about the third move and couldn’t seem to get going after that'."

A former county champion, G.H.D. was charmingly self-deprecatory in his reminiscences, as when he had a game adjudicated by [[Savielly Tartakower|Tartakower]]: "The Great [[Chess master|Master]], having been fetched, sat down at the board very simply and unaffectedly, and drank in through his spectacles the fruits (and probably the whole deplorable history) of the Badmaster’s afternoon strategy."</blockquote>

<blockquote>Little escaped G.H.D.'s eye, even towards the end. Modestly adapting [[Oscar Wilde]], he claimed to have "nothing to declare but his longevity", simply adding that he had "mingled from time to time with three generations of eminent players ranging from [[Isidor Gunsberg]] to [[Nigel Short]], and rambled extensively round the highways and byways of provincial chess". He was one of the game's most stylish chroniclers.</blockquote>

In 1984 and 1987, [[Edward Winter (chess historian)|''Chess Notes'']] published two collections of Diggle's ''Newsflash'' articles as ''Chess Characters: Reminiscences of a Badmaster'' and ''Chess Characters: Reminiscences of a Badmaster'', Volume II.<ref>G. H. Diggle, ''Chess Characters: Reminiscences of a Badmaster'', Chess Notes, Geneva, 1984.</ref><ref>G. H. Diggle, ''Chess Characters: Reminiscences of a Badmaster'', Volume II, Chess Notes, Geneva, 1987.</ref><ref>[http://www.ballo.de/1945-1998,_a.htm Schachliteratur 1946-1998, Section 4.3. (Belletristik)].</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Diggle, Geoffrey}}
[[Category:1902 births]]
[[Category:1993 deaths]]
[[Category:English non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:British chess writers]]
[[Category:English male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:People from South Holland (district)]]
[[Category:20th-century British chess players]]
[[Category:20th-century English male writers]]

G. H. Diggle - Revision history

imported>Entranced98: Importing Wikidata short description: "British chess player"